Contributing Editor David Rensin met with actress Karen Allen in her Los Angeles hotel room. The plucky, comely star of last summer's box-office-smash Raiders of the Lost Ark was in town to tape the Fridays show. Says Rensin: "As wonderful as Karen Allen looks, our conversation revealed that there's much more to this woman than meets the eye. She has done years of theater work, as well as movies such as The Wanderers, Cruising, A Small Circle of Friends and National Lampoon's Animal House. Her latest film, Captured, is about religious cults. Frankly, if there were a Karen Allen cult, I wouldn't mind approaching strangers in airports on her behalf."

Q 1

PLAYBOY: In one article we read, the reporter was so obviously smitten that his descriptions of you were rhapsodic. How can you tell when someone's falling in love with you?

Karen Allen: I was really surprised when I read that piece, because when I sat down with him at the restaurant, I immediately knocked my drink on the floor and thought. Oh, God, this is going to be disastrous. Actually, we had a very nice conversation. As for someone falling for me, well, I think I'm guilty of not being astute in that way. That's what some of my friends tell me. Unless we're falling in love simultaneously, I'm unaware of it. Sometimes it's love at first sight--you know, seeing someone across a room, feeling that incredible attraction that you want to dismiss as only an incredible attraction. But it's all you have to go on.

And you have to trust that instinct, which will sometimes lead you astray, because people are not always what they appear to be. And then there are times when it happens with someone you've known for a long time as a friend. And then, all of a sudden....

Q 2

PLAYBOY: Which do you prefer?

Karen Allen: I think the second way is the healthier of the two, because then the love is on top of some foundation. One of the strangest changes that have occurred between men and women is all this freedom of sexuality. You have people immediately jumping into bed together--it's like fast food. What happens, often, is that you experience a kind of intimacy with someone before you know anything about him. Then you try to catch up. And when you can't catch up, it's usually detrimental to the relationship.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: Has that been a problem?

Karen Allen: For me? Years ago. I'd been with one person for about four years until recently, so I was experiencing a totally different side of things. But I think it was a problem for people I knew when everyone went "Yippee! We're going to do exactly what we want to do and be impulsive and instinctive!" It created a whole new set of problems that nobody really understood.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: In your movie about college life in the late Sixties and early Seventies, A Small Circle of Friends, you're involved in a menage a trois. The arrangement seems very sweet, charming and natural. Now, looking back, would you say that kind of experience was easier then?

Karen Allen: I guess the answer is yes. It seems harder to have an experience like that today than it would have ten years ago. But I don't know if it's just because you go through certain experiences and then move on to others or if they're just not that interesting now because they're familiar. When I'm around college-aged kids today, it doesn't seem as if that experimentation exists. Everyone seems to have become very bookish, competitive. Fraternities are back. Dress codes are back. Things we fought to get rid of.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: Is romance making a comeback in the Eighties?

Karen Allen: It's on the upsurge. Maybe it's a different kind of romantic approach, though. Things are more complex today because of changing attitudes about sexual roles. No one knows how to act. I've always led an individualistic life; in a way, spontaneous and impulsive. Sometimes it has made men insecure. It made it difficult to have consistent or long-term relationships. But a lot of things are changing for me right now. I'm feeling as though I'd like to be a little more stable. Strangely, about a dozen people I know are suddenly getting married. Others are now having their first children. On the other hand, because of the decision to postpone marriage for so long, some people have become harder to coexist with. They're not as flexible. I have three men friends--just friends--who go on and on about the women they see. And it's just like Woody Allen's Manhattan. These men wish they could find one perfect woman who combined certain qualities found in each of the many women they currently see. These people are limited because they believe things will never change; that if a woman is lacking in one quality or another, that's it. People grow. A good friend once said that eventually you love people--friends or lovers--because of their flaws.